Maybe considered in https://www.w3.org/2025/03/26-mse-text-tracks-minutes.html?
Your username is purple. Thank you for developing the Voyager app lol
I have a rule. Every time I come upon their posts in the wild or see a significant update, I donate.
I just did the same and I will adopt this rule!
As discussed previously, browsers are quite complex and so adding a new feature (subtitles) is actually adding several features, on top of existing features (video player) that aren’t really (arguably) core to the web experience.
(I think olds like me want to believe the web is still “for” text and static images, but the majority of users today are (allegedly) all-in on video.)
Anyway, what sub-features make up “simple” subtitles? Oh the usual: where are they sourced? What format? What language? What encoding? (Utf8 one can only pray) Left to right support? Asian character support? What font are you using? System fonts? Are they widely supported? Does any of it work on mobile? Who holds the relevant patents? Etc.
I’ll take complete video support over WebBluetooth, DRM, WebGL and other similar garbage.
Why is webgl garbage? You don’t think 3d online games should be able to exist?
I never used one tbh. Last time I used something WebGL was when its tech demo was released.
Of course all of these have uses, that’s why they exist. I just find these use cases very rare/exotic compared to viewing a video with subs.
A lot of people play online games. They aren’t exactly rare.
Something that is actually a lot less used (and probably a lot of effort to maintain as well) is webxr. It’s a cool technology but not very useful right now (although I could imagine it becoming more important in the future)
can we add webusb and direct filesystem access to the list?
There’s direct FS access now? Wow, going full ActiveX
yeah, in chrome. It’s put behind a permission… but that’s just a single click or two, and very dangerous, like webusb
maybe the plugin system wasn’t that bad of a concept for video players and such, but it should be more limited and especially secured in any way possible
Because Google wants subtitles hidden behind their server. There’s your answer.
Most sites use some custom js-based players instead of the native video tag anyways, so I don’t exactly think it’s an issue.
Support for this feature would lessen the need for such players though, and anything that lessens the amount of JavaScript in the world is an objective moral good.
Fair, although AFAIK we’d also need native hls support (outside safari) since it’s quite commonly used as well. Although, that info might be outdated
honestly, if it wasn’t so piss easy to write, i wouldn’t use it at all
Subtitles are not always simple text files in the source. They can come in various formats like SRT, WebVTT, Teletext, and VobSub—if they are present at all.
To integrate them into WebM, you must first determine if they exist, ensure they have the correct language tags (and tag them properly if they don’t), then extract them, convert them into a format compatible with the player, and finally remux them alongside the video and audio. This process can easily fail in an automated workflow if any of these conditions are unmet or if the subtitle format is incompatible.
Given this complexity, it’s understandable why many choose to avoid the effort rather than addressing whether WebM supports subtitles.
I am not defending anyone, but the process of it all makes it understandable, at least for me.
Because webbrowsers are webbrowsers and video players only on the side.
You WANT to go back to the era of autoplay music on every fuckdamn page?
Only if it’s midi and just one instrument.
Midi you say? https://onlinesequencer.net/3571035
yes
Unrelated to the question but I don’t believe webm(matroska) is based on RIFF, webp is but that’s separate.
Because you touch yourself at night
I can’t think of an occasion where I’ve been listening to something online and wanted tracks - everything that would benefit from having them, I would prefer to download and run via VLC anyways. I think there just isn’t any demand for the switch, and it would break a lot of legacy tools (like auto-transcription bots) to switch, much as .webp has.
